Headhunters (2 page)

‘As a matter of fact I do.’

‘Congratulations. Can you see how much it’s worth?’

‘When you know, you can.’

‘Yes, when you know, you can. The picture hanging there consists of a few lines, the woman’s head is a circle, a zero without a face, and the colouring is plain and lacks texture. In addition, it was done on a computer and millions of copies can be printed out at the mere press of a key.’

‘Goodness me.’

‘The only – and I do mean the only – thing that makes this picture worth a quarter of a million is the artist’s reputation. The buzz that he is good, the market’s faith in the fact that he is a genius. It’s difficult to put your finger on what constitutes genius, impossible to know for sure. It’s like that with top directors, too, Lander.’

‘I understand. Reputation. It’s about the confidence the director exudes.’

I jot down:
Not an idiot
.

‘Exactly,’ I continued. ‘Everything is about reputation. Not just the director’s salary, but also the company’s value on the stock exchange. What is, in fact, the work of art you own and how much is it valued at?’

‘It’s a lithograph by Edvard Munch.
The Brooch
. I don’t know what it’s worth, but …’

With a flourish of my hand I impatiently urged him on.

‘The last time it was up for auction the price bid was about 350,000 kroner,’ he said.

‘And what have you done to insure this valuable item against theft?’

‘The house has a good alarm system,’ he said. ‘Tripolis. Everyone in the neighbourhood uses them.’

‘Tripolis systems are good, though expensive. I use them myself,’ I said. ‘About eight grand a year. How much have you invested to protect your personal reputation?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Twenty thousand? Ten thousand? Less?’

He shrugged.

‘Not a cent,’ I said. ‘You have a CV and a career here which are worth ten times the lithograph you mentioned. A year. Nevertheless, you have no one to guard it, no custodian. Because you think it’s unnecessary. You think your success with the company you head up speaks for itself. Right?’

Lander didn’t answer.

‘Well,’ I said, leaning forward and lowering my voice as though about to impart a secret, ‘that’s not the way it works. Success is like Opie’s pictures, a few lines plus a few zeros, no face. Pictures are nothing, reputation is everything. And that is what we can offer.’

‘Reputation?’

‘You’re sitting in front of me as one of six good applicants for a director’s job. I don’t think you’ll get it. Because you lack the reputation for this kind of post.’

His mouth dropped as if in protest. The protest never materialised. I thrust myself against the high back of the chair, which gave a screech.

‘My God, man, you
applied
for this job! What you should have done was to set up a straw man to tip us off and then pretend you knew nothing about it when we
contacted
you. A top man has to be headhunted, not arrive ready-killed and all carved up.’

I saw that had the desired effect. He was rattled. This was not the usual interview format, this was not Cuté, Disc or any of the other stupid, useless questionnaires hatched up by a motley collection of, to varying extents, tone-deaf psychologists and human resource experts who themselves had nothing to offer. I lowered my voice again.

‘I hope your wife won’t be too disappointed when you tell her the news this afternoon. That you missed out on the dream job. That, career-wise, you’ll be on standby once again this year. Just like last year …’

He jerked back in his chair. Bullseye. Naturally. For this was Roger Brown in action, the most radiant star in the recruitment sky right now.

‘Last … last year?’

‘Yes, isn’t that right? You applied for the top job at Denja’s. Mayonnaise and liver paste, is that you?’

‘I understood that sort of thing was confidential,’ Jeremias Lander said meekly.

‘So it is. But my job is to map out resources. And that’s what I do. Using all the methods at my disposal. It’s stupid to apply for jobs you won’t get, especially in your position, Lander.’

‘My position?’

‘Your qualifications, your track record, the tests and my personal impression all tell me you have what it takes. All you’re missing is reputation. And the fundamental pillar in constructing a reputation is exclusivity. Applying for jobs at random undermines exclusivity. You’re an executive who does not seek challenges but
the
challenge. The one job. And that’s what you will be offered. On a silver platter.’

‘Will I?’ he said with another attempt at the intrepid, wry smile. It no longer worked.

‘I would like you in our stable. You must not apply for any more jobs. If other recruitment agencies contact you with tempting offers you must not take them. Stick with us. Be exclusive. Let us build up your reputation. And look after it. Let us be for your reputation what Tripolis is for your house. Within two years you’ll be going home to your wife with news of a better job than the one we’re talking about now. And that’s a promise.’

Jeremias Lander stroked his carefully shaven chin with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Hmm. This interview has moved in a different direction from the one I had anticipated.’

The defeat had made him calmer. I leaned forward. Opened my arms. Held up my palms. Sought his eyes. Research has proved that seventy-eight per cent of first impressions at interviews are based on body language and a mere eight per cent on what you actually say. The rest is about clothes, odours from armpits and mouth, what you have hanging on the walls. My body language was fantastic. And right now it was expressing openness and trust. Finally, I invited him in from the cold.

‘Listen, Lander. The chairman of the board of directors and the finance director are coming here tomorrow to meet one of the candidates. I’d like them to meet you, too. Would twelve o’clock be convenient?’

‘Fine.’ He had answered without checking any form of calendar. I liked him better already.

‘I want you to listen to what they have to say and thereafter you can politely account for why you are no longer interested, explain that this is not the challenge you were seeking and wish them well.’

Jeremias Lander tilted his head. ‘Backing out like that, won’t it be seen as frivolous?’

‘It will be seen as ambitious,’ I said. ‘You will be regarded as someone who knows his own worth. A person
whose
services are exclusive. And that’s the starting point for the story we refer to as …’ I gave a flourish of the hand.

He smiled. ‘Reputation?’

‘Reputation. Do we have an agreement?’

‘Within two years?’

‘I’ll guarantee it.’

‘And how can you guarantee it?’

I noted:
Quick to regain the offensive
.

‘Because I’m going to recommend you for one of the posts I’m talking about.’

‘So? It’s not you who makes the decisions.’

I half closed my eyes. It was an expression my wife Diana said reminded her of a sluggish lion, a satiated lord and master. I liked that.

‘My recommendation is my client’s decision, Lander.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In the same way that you will never again apply for a job you are not confident of getting, I have never made a recommendation a client has not followed.’

‘Really? Never?’

‘Not that anyone can remember. Unless I am one hundred per cent sure the client will go along with my recommendation, I don’t recommend anyone and prefer the job to go to one of the competitors. Even though I may have three brilliant candidates and am ninety per cent sure.’

‘Why’s that?’

I smiled. ‘The answer begins with
R
. My entire career is based on it.’

Lander laughed and shook his head. ‘They said you were tough, Brown. Now I know what they mean.’

I smiled again and rose to my feet. ‘And now I suggest you go home and tell your beautiful wife that you’re going to refuse this job because you’ve decided to aim
higher
. My guess is you can look forward to a pleasant evening.’

‘Why are you doing this for me, Brown?’

‘Because the commission your employer will pay us is a third of your first year’s gross salary. Did you know that Rembrandt used to go to auctions to raise the bidding for his own pictures? Why would I sell you for two million a year when, after a little reputation building, we can sell you for five? All we are asking is that you stick with us. Do we have a deal?’ I proffered my hand.

He grabbed it with gusto. ‘I have a feeling this has been a profitable conversation, Brown.’

‘Agreed,’ I said, reminding myself to give him a couple of tips on handshaking technique before he met the client.

Ferdinand slipped into my office as soon as Jeremias Lander had departed.

‘Argh,’ he said, cutting a grimace and wafting his hand. ‘Eau de camouflage.’

I nodded while opening the window to let in some fresh air. What Ferdinand meant was that the applicant had slapped on too much aftershave to hide the nervous sweats that pervade interview rooms in this branch of work.

‘But at least it was Clive Christian,’ I said. ‘Bought by his wife, like the suit, the shoes, the shirt and the tie. And it was her idea to dye his temples grey.’

‘How do you know?’ Ferdinand took a seat in the chair Lander had been sitting in, but jumped up again with an expression of revulsion as he felt the clammy body heat that still clung to the upholstery.

‘He went as white as a sheet when I pressed the wife button,’ I answered. ‘I mentioned how disappointed she would be when he told her the job wouldn’t be his.’

‘The wife button! Where do you get this stuff from,
Roger
?’ Ferdinand had settled into one of the other chairs, his feet on a pretty good copy of a Noguchi coffee table. He had taken an orange and was peeling it, releasing an almost invisible spray which covered his newly ironed shirt. Ferdinand was unbelievably slapdash for a homosexual. And unbelievably homosexual for a headhunter.

‘Inbau, Reid and Buckley,’ I said.

‘You’ve mentioned that method before,’ Ferdinand said. ‘But what exactly is it? Is it better than Cuté?’

I laughed. ‘It’s the FBI’s nine-step interrogation model. It’s a machine gun in the world of pea-shooters, an instrument that would blast a hole through a haystack, that doesn’t take prisoners, but gives quick, tangible results.’

‘And what results are they, Roger?’

I knew what Ferdinand was fishing for, and that was fine by me. He wanted to find out what gave me the edge, what made me the best and him – for the time being – less than the best. And I gave him what he sought. For those were the rules, knowledge was to be shared. And because he would never be better than me. He’d always turn up with shirts reeking of citrus, forever wondering whether someone had a model, a method or a secret that was better than his.

‘Submission,’ I answered. ‘Confession. Truth. It’s based on very simple principles.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as beginning by questioning the suspect about his family.’

‘Pah,’ Ferdinand said. ‘I do that as well. It makes them feel secure if they can talk about something familiar, something close to them. Plus it opens them up.’

‘Precisely. But it also allows you to probe their weak points. Their Achilles heel. Which you will be able to use later on in the interrogation.’

‘Hey, what terminology!’

‘Later on in the interrogation when you have to discuss what rankles, what happened, the murder he is suspected of having committed, what makes him feel lonely and abandoned by everyone and what makes him want to hide, you make sure you have a roll of kitchen towel on the table, positioned just out of the suspect’s reach.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the interrogation has come to its natural crescendo and the time has come for you to press the emotion button. You ask him what his children will think when they find out that their dad is a murderer. And then, when the tears well up in his eyes, you pass him the roll. You have to be the person who understands, who wants to help, in whom he can confide about all the bad things. About that silly, silly murder that just happened, as if of its own accord.’

‘Murder? What the hell are you on about? We recruit people, don’t we? We’re not trying to convict them of murder.’

‘I am,’ I said, taking my jacket from the office chair. ‘And that’s why I’m the best headhunter in Oslo. By the way, I’ve put you down for the interview with Lander and the client tomorrow at twelve.’

‘Me?’

I went out of the door and down the corridor with Ferdinand skipping after me as we passed the other twenty-five offices that constituted Alfa, a medium-sized recruitment company that had survived for fifteen years and brought in between fifteen and twenty million kroner per annum, which, after a far too modest bonus had been paid out to the best of us, was pocketed by the owner in Stockholm.

‘Piece of cake. All the details are in the file. OK?’

‘OK,’ said Ferdinand. ‘On one condition.’